"You fight with momentum.
There are only a few types of surprises and direct actions."
Sun Tzu's The Art of War 5:2:20-21
- Free Art of War
- New to Sun Tzu?
- Win Productively
- Sun Tzu's Rule Book
- Art of War Info
- About Us
- Book Owner Premiums
- Glossary
Winning Productively
Sun Tzu saw that success in competition means building winning positions. For Sun Tzu, competition means a comparison of positions. A "battle" is any point of comparison where people decide whose position to support and whose to oppose. Creating conflicts is the most costly way to win these comparisons. Sun Tzu's system teaches us how to systematically advance our positions in the most effective way possible.
Keys to The Art of War
Sun Tzu's book is one of the most valuable works in human history. It is also one of the most difficult to understand. Much of Sun Tzu's writing is based on concepts in traditional Chinese science and philosophy with which modern readers are unfamiliar. Simply reading an English translation of Sun Tzu gives you very little idea of his methods. There are a number of serious barriers that stand in the way of our understanding the text. Much of what it teaches is diametrically opposed to what we think we "know" about competition.
To get you started, we give you an idea what the book covers in this brief summary of its chapters. We then explain the work's underlying cultural context and roots in Chinese science, especially its methods of diagramming relationships.
Today's Article on Sun Tzu
Below is one of the 232 articles in our Sun Tzu's Rule Book. Each explains one aspect of Sun Tzu' science and a step-by-step process for using it. We offer a new article every day following our Rule Book's Outline.
Though competition is inherently chaotic, we still expect it to make sense. We are wired to find patterns even in meaningless noise. Despite the overwhelming complexity of competitive environments, we still cling to our expectations of order. Admitting that we cannot understand a situation creates cognitive dissonance, especially since we have been trained in linear thinking rather the than adaptive methods of Sun Tzu's strategy. We cling to our expectation. We are surprised when situations fail to develop according to those expectations. The reality of chaos affects us emotionally on a subconscious level. The unrecognized chaos makes us feel tense, frustrated, and even fearful.
Our reaction to chaos makes surprise possible. When we use surprise, we take advantage of the inherent chaos of the situation. Since people are looking for patterns, they shift their focus to us. As the author of a surprise, we are different from everyone else in the situation. We alone are assumed to be in control of the event, and, by proxy, of the situation. This changes the expectations of everyone with whom we deal. They grant us power over a situation that everyone else sees as outside of their control. Everyone gauges their reactions based upon that perception of power.
We create surprise using the following five rules.
- We leverage people's sense of expectations in a chaotic situation. Chaos is a necessary ingredient to...
Popular Pages
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Peter Drucker on Strategic Planning It is remarkable how the same lessons need to be rediscovered again and again. Sun Tzu dealt with the confusion between a warrior's adaptive strategy in dealing with competing people and long-term planning in dealing with objects. We are still dealing with it today. In this 1973 book, Management... More... |
 |
